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I’ve seen so many horror movies over the years starting from a very young age that the idea of being in a remote area all alone is always creepy to me.
Who might be lurking out there?
Am I accidentally going to stumble upon a human sacrifice in the woods?
What’s in that abandoned house up on that hill?
The possibilities are endless, really?
Instead of just imagining them, let’s dive into some TRUE stories that AskReddit users experienced in remote areas. Prepare to be scared!
1. This is very weird.
“A little over 18 years ago I had just gotten out of the military. I drove all the way from Louisiana to my home town in Montana, without incident.
I spent a few days at home and then got back on the road because my new home destination was Boise Idaho. It was February so instead of going straight down the length of the state I cut across the panhandle of Idaho into Washington. The highway going straight down through the state is really twisty and very dangerous in the winter.
So I crossed the state line into Washington. It was a Sunday and it was very very early in the morning. As cliche as it sounds there was quite a bit of fog in the air. I had been driving for a while and I really had to use the bathroom.
Now normally given how I was out in the middle of nowhere I would normally just pulled over on the side and took a whizz but since it was so foggy and hard to see I thought it safer to just wait until I hit the next small town.
So I drove for maybe 5 more miles and I started seeing signs for a town. I can’t remember for the life of me the name of the town but I think it was Linden or Linder something like that. It was on I90 going into the Spokane valley So I head towards the sign which was a right turn off the interstate and its a short drive up this road and I reached the town. It was small but I thought nothing of it since I was from a small town in Montana.
Now here is where things get odd. There was not a single person to be found. There were cars and business but not a single person to be found no one walking the street no logging trucks driving everything was just as still as the air. I stopped at a gas station. It was one of those 1 in all places that did car repair tires etc, but no one was at the counter.
I thought well maybe it’s just really early. So I went around to the side to see if the bathroom was locked and it was. As I made my way back around to the front of the building saw a delivery truck it was a coke classic truck. Except it wasn’t moving its head lights were on the hazard lights were on and the passenger and driver side doors were open just sitting there in the middle of the street.
Yes I was getting a bad vibe so I got back in my car and went back the way I came I got back to i90 and thought again about just pissing on the side of the road but honestly I was too afraid. I continued driving until I hit Spokane honestly I was more than a bit freaked out and had completely forgotten I had to piss.
I didnt see anything creepy or hear anything creepy but the stillness in the air and the complete lack of life human or animal was just terrifying and unsettling.
I looked on the map to where I was once I got to Spokane which was a rand McNally’s map (because GPS on phones was just not a thing yet) and I could not find it at all on the map even as I was writing this I looked at Google maps and nothing by the name Linden Linder or otherwise is on the map. I still to this day will never forget that feeling of just freaky displacement I felt there.
When I got to Boise I told my friend about it and he thought I was just trying to rip off silent hill or resident evil and honestly I can’t blame people for saying that but at the same time that was the reason I wouldnt piss on the side of the road. I kept recalling the part in RE 1 where the hikers were killed by the murderous dogs.
Anyway if you stuck around this long thanks for reading and if you know of a town on hwy 2 between Coeur d’lene Idaho and Spokane Washington people let me know. If you are from there I mean no offense but your town is creepy as fuck.”
2. Awful.
“I’d been at football training with a few of my cousins when I was about 10 years old.
We decided to take a walk before our parents picked us up, so we went along the canal towpath. My cousin looked down in the canal and say a really nice jacket floating along and being a weird scavenger person decided to reach in to fish it out.
Well, the jacket turned over. And so did the man wearing it. He also had no face left.
Not gonna lie, that was rough.”
3. All those eyes.
“Me and a friend decided to take our 4x4s and go camping in the mountains.
I wake up middle of the night because I need to take a piss. So I put on my headlamp and I walk a bit further from camp and as I’m doing my business, I hear rocks ruffle behind me as if they’re being walked on. Anxiety rises. I finish up and turn around, and as my headlamp faintly lights up the area around me. All I see eyes, about 20 of them and just staring at me. My breathing stops. And I literally freeze where I’m standing. And then I hear a “maaa’aaa(goat blest)”.
It was a fucking herd of mountain goats that were intrigued by the ape in their backyard. Almost gave me an aneurysm.”
4. What are you doing here?
“My husband and I were hiking up a mountain in the Pacific Northwest.
It’s perpetually muddy due to a large number of waterfalls along the sides of the trail, so there’s no way you can avoid getting at least a little dirty.
Around an hour and a half up the trail, we passed two men wearing black suits, black hats, black glasses, holding black leather briefcases and wearing black dress shoes. Completely clean dress shoes. And immaculately clean, pressed pants. Not a spot of dirt or a wrinkle on either of their clothes.
As we passed each other, one of them whispered something in German. I looked back at them and they were both standing still and looking back at us, staring.
It was all so surreal.”
5. Summer camp.
“When I was about 7 or 8, my parents sent me to a local summer camp that they would pick me up from in the afternoons. I never really liked it because the kids were mean, everything was either broken or not clean, and the counselors obviously didn’t care.
I remember the girl’s changing room had a door that lead out to the woods but the doorknob was gone so it was unlocked all the time and you could see into it. This was primarily where the girls changed into their bathing suits and there was usually someone blocking the view while we changed so the boys couldn’t look in.
Well, one day I’m changing alone and someone wasn’t blocking the door. I look over and see an eye peeping in through the hole watching me change. I pull the rest of my clothes back on quickly and run out to tell my twin brother. I tell my dad that I don’t want to go back to that camp anymore and he begrudgingly takes us out of the camp pretty soon after because he knew how much we hated it.
Years later, the camp has been closed down for many many years and I’m asking my dad about it. He gets really grim and tells me it shut down because a 13 year old boy had raped 7 year old girl in the woods right behind the girl’s bathroom a few weeks after I had told him about someone watching me change.”
6. Bigfoot?
“Cowlitz River. Washington State.
Camping with my dad and sister me buddies, early 90s. Something was throwing rocks and sticks into our camp. We shined a flashlight out and caught a reflection of eyes and a silouete. Very very tall. Kept throwing stuff in our camp randomly for about 15 minutes. We just stoked the fire really high. In the morning I woke up to heavy footsteps in our camp and something reeked. Woke up my dad.
He shook the tent and yelled. Whatever it was ran off.”
7. Scary.
“My girlfriend and I were hiking along some abandoned railroad tracks and we get to a small bridge going over a little creek. I’m about to go explore under the bridge when she points something out. I look over and in the woods across from us I see a guy.
I’m like whatever and keep headed down to the creek area and then the guy stands up and he’s naked. We immediate back track pretty quickly to get away from there and once were like 1 minute down the trail I look back and this naked dude is just standing in the middle of the trail watching us walk away.”
8. Abandoned building.
“So when I was 15, my friends and I liked to climb abandoned buildings.
We found one down my the river. About 3 stories high and in pretty bad condition. I remember there were no stairs initially and we had to pull ourselves up. We climbed to the top via broken stairs after that. At the top was a small open room where someone was living.
We walked in to look around and immediately noticed the walls were covered in pictures. Pictures of women tied up, naked, obviously in pain in all sorts of positions. Some appeared dead but they were from magazines. We never got out of a building and away from an area so fast.
Looking back, it was probably just serious bdsm porn but 15 year old me dipped out.”
9. Interrupters.
“Walking on the beach with my boyfriend and we had walked to a giant rocky cliff to makeout.
Somebody was just gazing at the ocean, crying and shaking. Mind you, this is late at night, like around 9:30 pm. We asked him if he was ok, he apologized and practically ran back down the cliff (away from the dangerous areas).
My boyfriend and I watched him until he reached the public area and decided to call it a night. Im pretty sure he was going to jump.”
10. No way!
“This took place in the Australian bush around 10/11 at night.
I was 17, leading a staggered column of about 60 Cadets to our detachment campsite. Due to light discipline rules, only myself at the very front of the group and the other flight commander at the rear had torches on. This was so that any vehicles coming along the trail could see us and so that most of the cadets could maintain their night vision(we were camouflaged up and thus difficult to see at night).
As we walked along I periodically looked to my sides, and kept seeing what looked like dew drops on the ground. Almost like tiny blue gems glinting in my torch light either side of the road.I had to maintain my position in the formation, so I couldn’t get a good look at what they were.
However, after a while we stopped for a very brief break, and I took the opportunity to have a closer look. Walking over to the side of the trail I spotted a small cluster of the “diamonds” and focused my head torch on them. Rather than seeing diamonds or dew drops or anything remotely pleasant, I instead saw a group of about 5 large spiders just crouching in the leaf litter and staring at me.
They looked like huntsmans which are about the size of an adults hand. Sweeping my head around, I realised there were thousands of the things. All over the ground, some on the trunks of trees, and everywhere around me; glaring at the light affixed to my head.
I had a very brisk walk back to the formation and attempted to play it cool while screaming in my head. Being a massive Arachnophobe, I have no fucking clue how I managed to set up a tent and spend the next week in that cursed forest.”
11. Won’t do that again.
“I was in a large wooded area near my bf’s home, with him, hanging out nearly at midnight. We had gone in pretty deep and it required a good amount of climbing. The closest path was maybe 5-7 min climbing down so it was highly unlikely someone could be at that spot, that time of the night, besides us.
As we were kissing and stuff he thought he saw a shadow move 20 – 25 feet to the left of us, climbing, but it stopped suddenly when my bf looked at it. He told me to be wary and that exact moment we saw a dark figure climbing a little up but diagonally, like he tried to go directly above where we were.
We didn’t move and watch him till he closed the horizontal gap and was directly above us maybe 15 feet of steep downhill thick forest. Then he began to come towards us.
Without skipping a bit my bf grabbed my hand and we almost ran downhill till the path. We made it in less that two minutes while still holding hands and listening to the man running behind us. We ran as fast as we could down the path and out of the forest where there was a cafe and some basketball and tennis courts next to the wooded hill, and of course, people.
As we realised we came really close to be mugged or worse, we vowed never to go there at night again.”
12. OH MY GOD.
“I found the body of a murdered woman in the woods when I was 10.
I was collecting cans to trade in for money and walked to a party spot in the woods and she was lying face-down in the grass. This was in ’97 or so and I found out a few years ago it’s become the center of a local urban legend and the story going around is quite different than what I experienced.
It messed me up pretty bad for a while.”
13. On the outskirts.
“I used to work in low income home weatherization, basically giving free shit away to help lower electricity and gas bills and make the home more comfortable to people who really needed it; installing doors and insulation and so forth.
One step in qualifying a home is testing combustion appliances to make sure they’re not emitting carbon monoxide into the living space, because if they are and we seal up the house we could kill the whole family.
During a pre-inspection of a home on the outskirts of the city, I ask to see the owner’s water heater. He tells me that it’s in the basement, which is fairly normal, and I tell him I have to inspect it before work can start. So, he goes into the kitchen and starts moving the refrigerator. Turns out the entry into the basement is underneath carpeting beneath the fridge. I should note that I went and did thousands of homes over the years, and had never seen such a thing.
But, whatever, needs to be done regardless and so I pull out my flashlight and shine it down the stairs, to check out the layout but really to look for black widow spiders because fuck black widows. At this point I notice a dead cat, mostly down to a skeleton. Not my favorite sight but really common in crawlspaces and basements. I take a few steps down the stairs and continue my spider check, and notice another couple of small animal skeletons.
At this point I start to worry about gas, or poisons, or something equally dangerous, and start looking closer. There are animal skeletons everywhere, at least ten on a cursory look. Some of them are so degraded I can’t determine what they used to be. I also happen to notice that this guy is waiting at the entrance a little too quietly, with his hand on the door.
Something clicks in my brain and I get this immense sense of danger. I’m about four steps from the door being clear to close, I have no partner on the job with me, there’s death all around me, and I realize just how hidden the entrance to the basement really was.
I noped the fuck out, told the guy I needed extra tools and would be back, and marked the job as non-feasible for health and safety as I was driving away. I have no idea if I was actually in any danger, it could have been completely innocent; but I still remember the adrenaline rush and sense of doom, and sometimes you just don’t take chances.
What about you?
Have you ever seen any scary stuff out in the middle of nowhere?
When I was in high school, my friends and I used to get in the back of a pick-up truck and we’d drove around out in the country in the middle of the night for hours just to have an adventure and creep ourselves out.
It was spooky and a lot of fun. Sadly, we never happened upon a Satanic ritual or anything like that…but there are a lot of weird and creepy things going on out there in the middle of nowhere…
Let’s see what AskReddit users had to say about the things they’ve seen in remote areas…
1. A hike…in Transylvania.
“Went on a mountain hike in Transylvania with a group of friends from school, and way up, after maybe 12-14 km of trekking, we saw a house….was in the middle of nowhere.
It had a barn, with a few animals, couple of cows, chicken, etc. As we get closer, we see a few people, a guy and 5-6 women. Not sure if there were more inside. The dude comes to greet us, barely speaking the language. We had a hard time understanding what he’s saying.
They lived without electricity, gas, anything. This is in the early 90s, so there’s no internet, mobile phones to worry about. At least for most people.
Anyway, they all looked weird, kinda dumb expressions on their face, we can barely understand eachother. They asked us who’s the president now, and if we want some milk. They look at our clothes and shoes weirdly, curious…like who knows when is the last time they had human contact.
Or maybe there were more crazies around those parts…dunno. Not sure to this day what was going on. It’s not typical in the region, so we kinda freaked out, especially cause the dude looked a bit disturbed, and we were too young.
We were looking around to see if there’s more of them, paranoia was getting to us, thinking there must be a village nearby. What was also weird is that all the women kept their distance, and never got close to us. Like he was guarding them, or checking us out, if it’s safe for them.
One of my friends kept saying we don’t want their milk, and we need to go, cause it’s getting dark. We walked calmly for a while, then when we thought we’re out of their sight, bolted like crazy out of there. Needless to say, we camped after a few hours, and we always had one person awake to keep watch.
We told people that were living in the villages near that area, about the “mountain people”, and they didn’t believe us. They said nobody lives there, up in the mountains.”
2. Get outta there!
“Doing urban exploration in a dilapidated church at night, on one of the floors was this circular motif in the floor where i guess a podium or something was.
There was fresh blood on it as if something was killed there. When we went in the basement later on, we heard someone running upstairs.”
3. Voodoo hut.
“Okay so one time back when I was like 11 me and my friend were walking through the woods because he said he had something he wanted to show me. We walked down the path for a good 20 minutes until he suddenly started walking through some closely planted thin trees.
Despite my confusion I followed him until he suddenly stopped in a clearing and there was a round mud hut infront of us, he told me he was too scared to go inside so I did instead. The floor was lower down then the floor itself and there was a little fire put in the centre, it was surrounded by DIY wooden bench things.
Although that was odd in itself, the real show stopper were the walls, every inch or the mud walls were covered in animal skulls held up by wire, these would range from a small sparrow skull to a deer skull. It was a pretty neat sight tbf. Outside of the hut was another small bench which had the phrase ‘Where heaven and earth meet’ carved into it.
Cut to January of this year and me and my Mum tried to find the weird voodoo hut again in the woods, while we did come across the hut it had sadly been demolished and all but a few of the skulls had been taken. It just kinda looked like someone had jumped on top of it after stealing all of the skulls for the what I can only imagine to be some vulture culture collection.
It’s kinda sad it had to go but I still remember like it was yesterday.”
4. The sixth person.
“It was dark and I was sitting around a bonfire with four friends in rural North Carolina.
We had been drinking and they had smoked a bit (I wasn’t at the time) and were taking turns telling stories. A lull came in the conversation and the black silhouette of a sixth person stood up and faded into the surrounding darkness. We decided that we’d had enough for the night and packed everything up before walking back to a friends house.
All five us swear there was a sixth person there but don’t remember any kind of discernible characteristic besides they seemed to be covered in shadow.”
5. Cult activity.
“Back when I was a kid some friends and I came across people in robes chanting around a campfire out in the woods on the edge of the town we lived in.
We were staying at a friend’s house for a birthday party/sleepover and went for a late night walk. This was back in the late 80’s during the satanic panic. Looking back now, I’m sure it was just some teenagers goofing around, but at the time it scared the living bejeezus out of us. One of the girls with us had a panic attack and started hyperventilating.
Got pretty serious, but we finally managed to get her calmed down.”
6. Time to turn around.
“I was driving through rural parts of Missouri with a buddy.
We drove down a single lane road that had no exit. At the end of the road, there was a group of deer corpses laid in a perfect circle.
I’d say there was at least 10 deer.”
7. Camping out.
“Was camping a couple of years ago when I heard movement outside my tent.Thinking it was my friend I called out to him but there was no answer.After a minute the movement stopped so I left my tent and sat outside it for a while
10 minutes passed when my friend that I thought had been moving came out of his tent looking for his phone.He denied that it was him who was outside the tent.It was only him,myself and my gf at the time so I said it must have been an animal.
At that point we both heard something move very close to us and saw the silhouette of a person watching us.Don’t ask me why but we both got up and started to approach the person who began to run away.We chased him/her for a minute but gave up when we noticed them drop stuff from their hand.
Not only did they drop my friends phone that he couldn’t find but mine and my girlfriends as well
The person was in our tents…..”
8. House in the woods.
“When I was a kid, I used to live on a tiny property in the woods. My house was basically built around where stables were once. My room was, back when it was still stables, where the hay was stocked. Before getting to the creepy thing I need to say some other stuff:
– When you were in my room you could sometimes smell hay out of nowhere.- My dog was always refusing to go upstairs because something was scaring the shit out of it there.- You could sometimes hear knocking on doors (they were 3 entrance doors in my house), sometimes all at once.
Now that this have been said, we can go to the fun thing. So my room had a big ass window that gave a big view over the woods and my garden was basically a clearing. Once, I fucking heard a kid giggling from upstairs. I ran there only to find my window open, and something running out in the woods.I spent 2 more years in this house and fucking felt insecure the whole time.”
9. Skin Walker?
“Small town in a relatively rural area. A few years after the fact, I’m now relatively certain it was a Skin Walker.
About 10 years ago, I was at my dad’s house for the weekend in Kentucky. The Appalachian people are very superstitious, hailing from the Scots-Irish people and just never losing that side of them. My dad wasn’t superstitious, I thought, and was not one to be easily scared. It was about, I dunno, 10 at night and we randomly decided to go into town to get some McDonald’s.
Daddy always insisted on walking in front of me and I always assumed it was so I wouldn’t accidentally step on a snake but now I don’t think that’s the case. So, he turned on the porch light and opened the screen door. He had put one foot on the porch and there was this God awful sound.
I will never in my life forget it. There was a screech followed by the sound of a crow. But it wasn’t a crow. The best way I can describe it is if a person was mimicking a crow call.
My hair stood up on the back of my neck and my dad retreated into the house. He slammed the big door and locked it, something I had never seen him do. Before I could ask a question he said, “It isn’t safe. We can go tomorrow morning.”
And so we did. But the rest of the night, we stayed inside. My dad didn’t even go outside to smoke a cigarette. He even let the (outside) dogs stay in the house. We never talked about that again but that was one of the scariest moments of my life.”
10. Not a good memory.
“When I was really young, we were on a family trip and me and my older brother took a ride on a boat. I remember my mom telling us to avoid the “big floating thing”.
She thought it was a buoy to signalize a dangerous rock under water or something. Being kids, of course we went straight there to explore it. So turns out it was not a buoy. That was a body of a tourist that went missing a week ago, as the police informed us a few days later. Creepy thing is he was one of a group of people that had disappeared together.
I believe they never find the rest. So, not a good childhood memory.”
11. Time to go.
“I was jogging at night with headphones on in a park with dense trees and bushes. The over growth was taking over the path and it was difficult to see so I turned the flashlight on my phone on.
I started to see a fire burning ahead but couldn’t really make it out (I take my glasses off when I jog). As I got closer there’s a clearing and I see a big big fire raging and no one around. So I pause a minute and fish my glasses out and find out that yes, there’s 6 people standing there actually.
Perfectly spaced apart from each other and they all turned at the same time to look at me.
I turned 180 and sprinted the fuck out of there.”
12. Not so sure anymore…
“My friends bought a huge chunk of property in southern Colorado in the San Luis Valley.
I went out for a month to clear 10 acres of forest for greenhouses to be built. I was there by myself the entire time and had to stay in a tent because there was no infrastructure yet. One night I was sitting on the edge of this overlook before bed and the entire canyon below me lit up with a huge flash of light and then was gone immediately.
I was kinda freaked out, but got over it and just went to bed. A few days later I was talking to a rancher a couple miles down the road and he said the morning after the night of the flash he found 3 of his cows in that canyon with all the blood drained out of their bodies and their eyes and some of their organs were removed.
There weren’t any tire tracks or any sign of struggle whatsoever near the cows. And let me tell you, this property was in the middle of NOWHERE. Needless to say I was pretty freaked out the rest of my time out there. Lots of weird shit like that was going and the entire area just had a very weird “vibe”.
I’m normally a very pragmatic person and not interested in the supernatural at all, but after my time in the San Luis Valley, I’m not so sure anymore.”
13. Do not sleep.
“I was on a canoe trip down the Shenandoah River with my wife. The only public property on the river is the islands, so that’s where people camp on multi-day trips.
Came across two women around dusk using a machete to hack into the brush on an island to camp, and my wife and I decided the island would be a good place to stop. We paddled a half mile down the island and set up camp near the river bank.
We were woken later by the sound of a machete hacking through the brush on the island and the two women maniacally screaming and laughing and shouting that they were going to find and kill us.
Didn’t sleep much that night.”
14. Very creepy.
“My boyfriend and I were backpacking through rural Tasmania a few years ago. While on a bus, we were discussing our plans for the ensuing two weeks. The girl in the seat in front turns around and offers us a place to stay in her town. We declined as we were headed elsewhere first, but she gave us her mobile number and said that she and her partner would love to have us.
A few days later we decide to take them up on their offer. We call her, and she says they’re happy to host us. So far so good.
They meet us at the train station and immediately something feels off. It’s really difficult to explain, but it’s that primal, ineffable feeling in your guts that tells you that something isn’t right. We ignored our guts and followed them.
They lead us straight out of town. We ask them where we’re going and they say that they live on the outskirts. This town is creepy as fuck. It’s an old mining town that has been largely abandoned, and as we walk the 15-odd minutes to their home the houses get shittier, with boarded up windows, overgrown gardens and no people in sight.
Eventually we reach the house at the very end of the town. It’s their house. We go in.
Set up in the middle of the living room is a single mattress with a sheet hanging around it. They show us around the house except for one door which stays closed. When I asked what was behind it they pretended not to hear. Our room has a made bed, chest of drawers and looks like a normal room. It seems weird that they sleep on mattresses in the living room when they have a “guest room”.
We go back into the living room and look around. Knives. A lot of knives. My boyfriend asks if they go hunting? No. The partner hands one of the knives to my boyfriend and asks him to open it. It’s a massive fucking bowie knife with what looks like blood staining around the edges of the blade. My boyfriend laughs awkwardly and sets it down.
They have a tattoo gun – “to practice”. My boyfriend asks if they have any tattoos. No. There’s a small axe at the door. I ask if they collect wood. No.
Suddenly the guy says he wants to go to the shops. We agree quickly because we’re creeped out and want to get back into the town.
The four of us leave and they start walking in the opposite direction to the town. I say that the town is back the other way. The guy says this way would be more interesting because it goes up through the trees. He says that they have never been up the mountain before but he knows the area and it would take the same amount of time.
I tell my boyfriend that I’m freaking out but he thinks it’s ok. We follow them into the trees. The path goes up the mountain. We are going in the total opposite direction of the town.
The girl turns around to her partner and whispers – “so where was the place again?”
My boyfriend and I freeze. I say I want to take the road back to town and start walking.
When the four of us arrive in the one shop in town – no one recognises the couple. And this is a really small town. We make an excuse that we want to go look at sights and that we’ll catch up with them later, and instead book a hotel room and freak out.
I did some snooping on the area. Their house had an extra room (behind the mystery door) and a basement. The path that we were taking led straight out of town and up the mountain. There was no way it could loop back into town.
So yeah pretty sure we narrowly avoided being murdered. Or maybe they were just massive weirdos. Tbh the creepiest thing was the fact that there was no drug paraphernalia at all – the state of the house and the weird behaviour would have been understandable if they were intoxicated but that wasn’t the case.”
Now it’s your turn!
In the comments, tell us about any unsettling encounters you’ve had in remote areas.
Relationships can be tough, and sometimes the ones with family are even more complicated than the romantic or friendship-types you choose on your own. It’s tougher to call it quits with family, honestly, because there are all kinds of complicated feelings that go along with the people who are supposed to love and protect you choosing not to do that.
This man, though, decided it was time to cut his parents completely out of her life, only to second guess himself after the fact.
As a child, he followed a strict diet like everyone else in the house. He never got sweets or treats, he was careful, he carried his EpiPen.
His mother doubled down, saying it was for his own good and look how healthy he is, how he doesn’t care about carbs, but he still isn’t talking to her – and he wants to know if he’s wrong.
They also pointed out that continuing the ruse into his adulthood could have had permanent consequences, so they obviously didn’t have his best interests at heart.
Would you ever do a thing like this to you kid to keep them healthy? I guess it’s easier than teaching them to eat right, but man – I just think it’s wrong!
What do you think? Tell us where you come down in the comments!
I’ve never met someone who was ever part of a cult, but I have to say that I find the whole concept extremely fascinating and I’ve read a lot about it over the years.
How does a person end up in a cult?
And what do they do when it’s time to get the hell out?
People opened up to shed some light on this very interesting subject.
Here are some frightening true stories from folks on AskReddit.
1. Jehovah’s Witness.
“This is actually something I was just thinking about the other day. I was raised a Jehovah’s Witness, and I think it was less one big “aha!” moment and more a bunch of little “what the fuck”s.
For those unfamiliar with the group, witnesses believe that Armageddon is coming any day now, and the only way to survive is be a baptized JW. They also refuse to accept blood transfusions, celebrate holidays, toast, date without supervision, and practice yoga, just to name a few things.
A big one for me was watching a leader from the very top of the group describe unbelievers as “vessels fit for destruction” (wtf?) and pull out a malformed piece of glassware to illustrate, he then smashed it on the floor to illustrate what will happen to us. Another prominent leader of the group was recorded warning that tight pants are designed by perverted homosexuals.
On a more personal level, the last year I was a witness I left a large religious gathering and was met with protestors. I realized something questionable is likely happening if people are taking time to protest. The picket signs weren’t even aggressive, they said things like “there is support! You can leave!”
The reason this even needs to be said is because witnesses shun people who leave the religion. I hadn’t seen either of my 2 older siblings in about 10 years.
I hung out with school friends outside of school for the first time when I was in grade 12 and my mom cried because she was afraid she was a bad parent. I got out at 17 and haven’t looked back.”
2. Strange…
“My realization that I needed to get out came when I found it was easier to tell my parents that my girlfriend was pregnant rather than tell them I didn’t want to go on a Mormon mission as a 17 year old.
It’s been 10 years and looking back it makes no sense, but it lead me to a beautiful life and I’m immensely grateful. Now I’m the father of the two most incredible children and I haven’t looked back.
Fuck the Mormon cult.”
3. Whoa.
“I was in Amway/LTD for a year and a half. I realized I needed to get out when:
I found out about the killings of gays in Chechnya and began to suspect that I was unwittingly funding that or similar activities through my involvement in Amway due to the extreme conservatism of the environment (and how our top leader mentioned that Russia has more morality than us (USA) and we need to catch up).
(Out of curiosity, I later found out that one of the DeVos foundations donated to NOM which worked toward enacting severe legal punishments for homosexuality in Uganda.)
I couldn’t get out of my seat while a speaker was talking and couldn’t not donate $236 to Here Be Lions during Sunday morning service at conference because of expectations that had been subtly drilled into my head.”
4. Youth group.
“Cult may be a dramatic word for me, but I was part of an aggressive church/youth group, meaning they wanted to be the biggest and best in the area.
My city had a ton of churches but my ex church could only hear its own voice, so then would plant a church in an area with a lot of other churches and run the smaller churches out of money. Even made a smaller church change it’s name because it was too similar.
I made excuses for years for my church and the way people acted so shallow and abuse of funds- I was 17 and wasn’t willing to believe that maybe these aren’t the good people I think they are.
Anyway, I didn’t need the “I need to get out moment”. I volunteered with them for a year and helped run camps and then not one leader tried to keep in touch with me, and I even shortly later got a divorce at 20.
I had so many leaders and people I looked up to, and no one ever reached out. Instead a few kicked me out of their bible study and removed me on social media because of some of my marital issues. I realized what it felt like to be on the other side of the white door.
It broke my heart. That marriage broke my spirit. I’ve been putting myself back together and like myself a lot more now.”
5. Listen to the voices.
“My church tried to convince me the voices I was hearing telling me to kill other people were from God and not the beginning of a psychotic breakdown.
Needless to say, they were in fact the beginning of a psychotic breakdown.”
6. The evils of music.
“I grew up in a sort of fringe protestant religion and went to boarding school for high school.
One Wednesday night they herded all of us students into the chapel where they showed us a very long documentary on the evils of music like the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, etc.
You know the drill, playing everything backwards, sacrifices to Satan, etc. I was kind used to eyerolling this tbh, since I had always loved rock music and my mom kinda programmed to me to be skeptical of the church anyways.
I just remember my friend Jake sitting in front of me starting to look around at all the other students who seemed to be kind of hypnotized by the whole thing.
He caught my eye and said something like, “Whitewolf! What is this? Isn’t this weird? This is wrong!” – and just for that something we had accepted as normal behavior became the launching point for seeing everything else they did from another perspective.
Just to have another person in there with me that confirmed my eye-rolling and even alerted me that we actually were sitting in a Wednesday night brainwashing session.”
7. Cast out.
“My church decided to fully disown and evict a young girl that got pregnant before marriage. I grab her hand and left along with her.
Fuck those cultish bitches. This is an innocent child of god like everyone else. Just cause you disapprove of her sin more than other sins gives you no right to say she no longer has christ.”
8. Acid cult!
“I was born into a cult.
In the ’70s my parents met a guy named Ross who is apparently the reincarnation of Jesus Christ. Through the power of LSD my parents especially my mum were completely convinced of this.
My mum to this day still thinks she legitimately floated off the ground and met god who is a female mind like a literal brain. Throughout my childhood I was told that religion is bullshit and that I should always follow my mind.
This led me to the conclusion in my teens that well this cult is a religion and what they spew sounds an awful lot like bullshit so through their own teachings I learned that science is right there is no god and drugs are bad.”
9. “For my own survival.”
“I honestly wanted out of my cult when other members made fun of my friend for “always acting gay” (he was actually in the closet) and he killed himself because he couldn’t take the pressure anymore.
At his funeral, everyone blamed the kid for ruining/traumatizing his parents and overall acted like they wasted their time mourning him. I was 16/17 at the time, also depressed and suicidal, and having my own realizations that I wasn’t totally straight. I also realized how people would treat my death if I committed suicide.
I didn’t leave until 9 years later, but that was when I knew I had to get out for my own survival.”
10. Church of God.
“Raised as a part of the “Church of God” side of Christianity.
Nothing really stood out to make me leave until I was about 12ish? I lived with my grandparents and my mom. My dad was in prison at the time. Now that I look back at it, the church itself was weird enough. Children’s plays with holiday people who we weren’t supposed to believe in.
I personally played Mother Nature in one of them. The moment I realized I needed to get out and leave was the moment I realized I wasn’t straight.
My mother acted like she accepted me but has since proven otherwise. My grandmother still doesn’t know and I don’t plan on telling her.”
11. Holy shit.
“I got in deep into That Religion Tom Cruise is Part Of But I Can’t Name It For Fear Of Death, mostly because I wanted to see how far the rabbit hole goes. So technically like being brainwashed of your own free will. But I had to flee the state I was living in at the time.
I got so far in I paid them about $500,000, a painful amount of money, but I managed to get into the inner circle of the leader of my region’s branch. And I was also very good with a gun, so they entrusted me to drive a car filled with about 3 duffle bags of money.
I asked out of curiosity how much was in it, and it was to the tune of $6 million (how they managed to fit $2 million in each I’ll never know). Of course, I had to deliver it all to a helicopter 100 miles away in the middle of bumfuck nowhere to be taken to the Cayman Islands for some reason.
I then decided “Alright, enough is enough, I gotta get out”. Part of the route, about 52 miles in, was a twisty road in a forested area, where there was a large drop with nobody around for miles.
So I thought “Alright, do I run off with the cash and get the fuck out of the country or should I deliver the cash and run?” I chose the former option. Checked for tracking devices, planted the ones I found in the bags all over the car, took two of the duffel bags, left the third opened in the also opened trunk, put my phone in the car, tossed everything but my driver’s license and some other personal info in my wallet all through the car, found a heavy rock, turned the car on, dropped the rock on the gas and got out of the way before running the hell away.
Managed to find some guy who was going the same way I was who was going to go fishing, and asked if he could give me a ride to the nearest city,
I think it was Montpelier, where I caught a flight up to Winnipeg. Found some guys who could launder the cash for me in exchange for $670,000. Accepted and got to work canceling my old bank account and cutting off my ties to them.
A week later I called up and told my friends that I won a month long getaway to Canada, and said that I ended up losing my phone and had to get a new one, and that I intended to tell them sooner, but I forgot about the trip at the last minute and had to run fast.
He told me that he heard the news of the incident, but while the authorities had no idea who did it (I gave the fisherman $5,000 to lie and say he offered a ride, but was rebuffed and went on his merry way), the cult knew, and that I was marked kill on sight for them.
Thank god he said that it would last for a couple more months, because they would make back the losses and more in a couple weeks, and my experiences never pointed to the contrary being an option, and that this was a couple decades ago.”
12. Satanic Panic.
“My friend was in a satanic cult and I remembered running into her at the store and she was..different, she didn’t have anything of her own to say, it looked like she was a kidnapped girl asking for help in front of a kidnapper.
I immediately called the police and so she was taken out of the group and placed in the protective whiteness program. Everything she had was delete showing no trace of her and she stayed for about maybe a year. The cult was broken up as there leader was killed in attempt murder of a three year old boy to “bring the lords down to us”
It was fucking crazy man, I think my friend got into because her younger brother got caught in a pyramid scheme and she suffered the consequences.”
13. Scamming and lying.
“I was involved in a niche community group that stayed fairly small (around 30 women) and we all met through a woman who organized retreats.
This woman was famous in the niche community. This was all very based around social justice/feminism and ‘finding our true selves.’ The retreats ran in the thousands for normal locations where nothing special was happening. We literally shared beds to make more money for the organizer.
My GTFO moment was when I was in a group chat with the entire group and the ‘leader’ started being honest that she didn’t really believe in the social justice agenda she was preaching constantly. The rest of the group was so far gone that they told her it was okay. There were also one-on-one exchanges where her personality and beliefs would change constantly. Something was very off.
I started to distance myself. About five months later, the niche community as a whole (not just the small group of 30-ish women) decided to call her out for not only scamming, theft, lies, but even grooming and sexual assault of people who attended the retreats. I’d witnessed some of this but was told to brush it off and that it was normal at the time.
The ‘cult’ banded together and refused to believe the hundred or so women who came forward. I was the ONLY one who noped out of it. They disowned me lol. It was very hard. They were very close to me at this point and it had been years. They were the reason that I became strong enough to leave my abusive marriage. I considered some my sisters.
They don’t talk to me now and the cult continues the sermons and retreats and general scamming and lying.”
I grew up in a sort of fringe protestant religion and went to boarding school for high school. One Wednesday night they herded all of us students into the chapel where they showed us a very long documentary on the evils of music like the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, etc. You know the drill, playing everything backwards, sacrifices to Satan, etc. I was kind used to eyerolling this tbh, since I had always loved rock music and my mom kinda programmed to me to be skeptical of the church anyways.
I just remember my friend Jake sitting in front of me starting to look around at all the other students who seemed to be kind of hypnotized by the whole thing. He caught my eye and said something like, “Whitewolf! What is this? Isn’t this weird? This is wrong!” – and just for that something we had accepted as normal behavior became the launching point for seeing everything else they did from another perspective. Just to have another person in there with me that confirmed my eye-rolling and even alerted me that we actually were sitting in a Wednesday night brainwashing session.
Wow, that stuff is truly creepy…
How about you?
Do you know anyone who was in a cult? Or maybe you were?
Cupcakes are muffins that believed in miracles and if that made you chuckle, you’re likely a person with an amazing sense of humor. If you didn’t crack a smile, you may be in need of some medicine–the best kind.
Hopefully, this dose of laughter made you feel great. And if you share it, then you’ll feel even better. So think of a pal that could use some chuckles and send these on over.
I’ve always been creeped out by scary movies and true crime books and articles that revolve around driving at night in a lonely place.
Maybe it’s on a remote stretch of highway, or maybe it’s an old country road where there isn’t another person around for miles.
Either way, it’s scary stuff and it makes you think about what you’d do if you saw something strange on the road or you encountered a terrifying situation.
And those creepy things really DO happen out there on the highways and byways.
Here are some interesting stories from folks on AskReddit.
1. Road kill.
“A fucking owl standing on the carcass of a large buck in the mountains at 3-5am.
All you see as you approach are two glowing red orbs, then slowly a becomes huge dark form standing on the edge of the road with eyes of fire. Then you get close enough and this massive fucking owl just gives you the death stare as you go past. You realize it was just a large ass owl standing on the remains of fresh road kill.
Freaked me out for the rest of the dark part of the drive.”
2. Bad accident.
“I was following a grey Toyota Tundra in a massive blizzard through Montana on McDonald pass. He was going pretty quick most of the way but must have been unfamiliar with how steep the final few miles are.
He got away from me as I slowed down to about 35. Not 5 min later I passed his tire marks in the fresh snow that went off the side of the mountain. Pulled over and looked down to see his truck upside down and on fire about 300 yards down.
Called 911. He didn’t die but was burnt up pretty bad. Sad and scary and don’t go 50 in the snow just because you have a truck or 4wd!!!”
3. Scooters.
“I had just finished driving for Uber and was driving down the access road to my home around 3am when I saw a body lying completely lifeless next to one of those motorized scooters.
I pulled over and flagged down his buddies who were drunk and kept going without realizing their friend was lying on the ground. Ambulance arrived and took the kid away, but I never came to find out if he made it.
F*ck those scooters man.”
4. Freak out!
“Not me but a friend.
After dropping me off at my house around 2 am, my friend calls me and tells me to pick my doors. He said he saw a man standing in the middle of the road and that as he passed him the man kept staring through him. Not at him really, but like their was something behind him in his back seat. He also said he could barely make out anything about the man other than his large eyes and trench coat.
What really terrified me is that this happened on a street that only my family lives on and no one would have been out that night. Also we’re a solid mile and a half from the nearest neighbor. Freaked me the hell out.”
5. Poor animal.
“A dead, butchered horse laying in the road. Someone had completely skinned and butchered a horse, took the choice pieces of meat, and just dumped it on the highway.
I almost crashed into it.”
6. Don’t pick him up.
“3am on a lonely road and I was the passenger. An old man only wearing a bra, panties and high heals was casually walking down the road.
My friend who was driving didn’t believe me and went back around. Sure enough, he saw him and we were like WTF.”
7. Better safe than sorry.
“I was on I-70 in Colorado going towards Utah, pulled over at a gas station at 8pm. Fueling up I noticed a couple of attractive women pumping gas, on the other side of the pump was the man in his late 40s, just staring at these young women without notice of anything else going on around him.
I walk inside to go grab some food for the next few hours of driving, when I come out I see both the younger women’s car and the older man’s truck are gone. I decided to hang out at the gas station for the next hour to catch a little sleep before hitting the road again.
After driving for a few hours (I was speeding heavy) I pull over at yet another gas station, the young women are there getting gas and eating some food on a picnic table. Looked like they had been there for a while. I didn’t see any sign or the man in the truck but can’t say I was looking very hard for it. Well here is where it got creepy as hell….
Can’t say I didn’t stare at them a bit, I mean they were good looking women. As I am watching them leave I see in the next parking lot over some headlights turn on and it’s the same man as before…. He leaves when the women leave once again.
Okay that’s a bit weird but could just be a coincidence as there weren’t many places to pull over. I leave a few minutes later and catch up to them…now this guy is riding there ass with his high beams on.
I decided to slow down and stay a distance behind the truck. 10 minutes or so later the women pull over once again to most likely get this guy off their ass…
With a sign of relief the truck keeps going and I continue on my way. About 1 mile down the road the guy just pulls off to the side of the highway…. So I pull off a mile or so down the road again.
Sure enough the women drive by and the guy is still following them. At this point we are out in the middle of nowhere and too many coincidences have happened. I called the cops to alert them and about 15 minutes the cops pulled the guy over.
I could have just seen too many horror movies that started like this and over reacted but ya never know. Better safe than sorry.”
8. That’s terrifying.
“Driving down a 2 lane divided highway. I came up to a couple semi sand went into the left lane to pass. I did a shoulder check to get back into the right lane when I saw headlights in front of me.. in my lane. The car was going the wrong way.
I managed to swerve into the ditch, felt like i was mere centimeters from death. Thought my wife’s scream would be the last thing I ever hear… And I never want to hear it again. The semis I passed all pulled to the shoulder to come check on us. Didn’t see the car anywhere.. I think they just kept going.
Had to pull into a gas station after and collect myself.”
9. On a dark road…
“A hitchhiker almost leaping out in front of my car on a dark forest road late at night. The woman literally popped out of nowhere. Had to drift into the oncoming lane. Read a police report that she ended up getting hit minutes after I drove by. She was intoxicated and running from the police. Pretty f*cking creepy.
I hope she’s alright. I can’t imagine what the driver that hit her was thinking.”
10. OH MY GOD!
“When I first started learning to drive I was working for my dad, and one day after work he asked if I wanted to drive home, I was like alright! So I got on the highway headed for home, and while driving, I looked in the rearview and a guy on a crotchrocket was coming up behind me, I thought nothing of it I was sure he would pass or slow down.
I look ahead again and a few moments later I hear this sound, like metal scraping against the ground. I look around and then look back into the rear view, and the bike was on its side, spinning down the highway, and behind it I could see the biker on his back, legs and arms flailing kind of like a baby on its back in a crib, then I watched as he dissapeared under the vehicle behind him.
I was so freaked out driving after that I didn’t want to drive for weeks following the incident. Then eventually got over it. Still I can see the guy in my mind just sliding along the ground flailing about then being swallowed under another car.”
11. Scary stuff.
“I was driving on the expressway around 2am and a semi hit a car and it went into the median. The car basically folded into itself and was beyond smashed. I can’t imagine that person survived.
It was incredibly sad and terrifying to see.”
12. About to get jacked.
“I was a very young woman driving home after clubbing, about 2 am through Hollywood. I was pulling up to a stop sign on Cahuenga, about 3 blocks from Hollywood Blvd., when a bunch of guys begin to casually stroll onto the crosswalk, coming from both sides.
I hit the gas and ran the stop sign without even thinking. They cursed and ran after me, but those boys were ready to jack me. My instincts took over before I even realized what was happening.”
13. Close call.
“Driving home one night from my fiancé’s house, normal night on the Florida highway.
It’s pretty dark, not too many lights, cruising at around 75 headed over a slight hill, just big enough that you can’t see the other side.
Get to the top and start making my way down the hill, and very suddenly in my headlight view I get a giant construction vehicle with all of its lights TURNED OFF, AND PARKED IN THE LEFT LANE OF THE HIGHWAY.
I really, seriously, pray to god that no one hit that parked construction vehicle (it was one of the ones that digs up dirt I think?) on the highway that day. I very, VERY narrowly avoided smacking right into the back of that thing.
I don’t know how the Cherokee I was driving at the time handled the sharp turn I made into the right lane to avoid the vehicle. Needless to say I was very nearly dead.
Immediately called Florida highway patrol and told them about it. I hope they got to it before someone got hurt, and I REALLY hope someone at that construction company lost their job. Because they could have killed multiple people.”
14. Funny/scary.
“Scariest and funniest at the same time.
I was working at a restaurant as a cook. We did full menu till 11:00 PM, then apps and burgers till 1:00 AM. I tended to pull the solo night shift, because I would walk out the door at 1:05 AM and the kitchen was stocked, clean, and perfect.
It was a long night. Stupid FoH kept sending back food orders after 1:00 AM, I didn’t leave till 2:00 AM. 30 minute drive home, and I was exceptionally tired.
I lived in the boonies of Wisconsin, at the time. A good 5km outside of town, which was 500 people, 2 churches, and 9 bars. I hit the little 24/7 truckstop just at the edge of that town for some munchies and smokes, and made the final trek home.
Encountering deer was not uncommon out there, so I was going slow. When what appeared before me, to my tired eyes, was a monster.
It had a huge, round body. This crazy long neck, a pointy head, and only 2 legs. Right in the middle of the road. Scared the ever loving fuck out of me in that state.
Thankfully, it stood there for a second. Brain re-engaged. It’s an ostrich. Ok, not a monster, heh, just… an…
What the fuck is an ostrich doing wandering around in Central Wisconsin?!?
I looked at it, it looked at me. I blinked. Nope, still there. Pretty sure it’s real. Finally, it trundled off into the forest.
What.
I grabbed my cellphone, and called the tiny little police station in town (non-emergency number).
“So… I’m really tired, so please laugh at me and tell me to go home and sleep and ignore the call… but I’m pretty sure I just saw an ostrich on Highway xx just outside $town.”
She started laughing hysterically, then assured me that:
No, I’m not hallucinating.
There’s an ostrich and emu farm on the other side of town, guy raises them for the kitch places in town for meat.
Some drunk driver felt that “turns are for pussies”, went up, over the berm, through the fence, and through most of the barn.
There’s still 4 animals, including the one I just spotted, unaccounted for.
Where are you exactly, and which way did it go so we can round it up?
I gave her the info, finished the last few miles home, and died in bed. Wild night, man.”
15. This is crazy and sad.
“Someone I knew locally came across a jeep that had just crashed into the ditch on a highway at night, flipped on it’s top, wheels still turning kind of thing.
He was the first on scene so called 911 and ran down into the ditch. The driver, who was badly mangled, had been tossed from the car and was dying. This guy held him and the driver died in his arms.
The weirdest part of it all was that he found out the next day that it was his cousin, but he hadn’t been able to recognize him.”
Shudder…
Now we want to hear your stories!
In the comments, please tell us about the creepy stuff you’ve seen when you’ve been driving at night.
I’ve always been creeped out by scary movies and true crime books and articles that revolve around driving at night in a lonely place.
Maybe it’s on a remote stretch of highway, or maybe it’s an old country road where there isn’t another person around for miles.
Either way, it’s scary stuff and it makes you think about what you’d do if you saw something strange on the road or you encountered a terrifying situation.
And those creepy things really DO happen out there on the highways and byways.
Here are some interesting stories from folks on AskReddit.
1. Road kill.
“A fucking owl standing on the carcass of a large buck in the mountains at 3-5am.
All you see as you approach are two glowing red orbs, then slowly a becomes huge dark form standing on the edge of the road with eyes of fire. Then you get close enough and this massive fucking owl just gives you the death stare as you go past. You realize it was just a large ass owl standing on the remains of fresh road kill.
Freaked me out for the rest of the dark part of the drive.”
2. Bad accident.
“I was following a grey Toyota Tundra in a massive blizzard through Montana on McDonald pass. He was going pretty quick most of the way but must have been unfamiliar with how steep the final few miles are.
He got away from me as I slowed down to about 35. Not 5 min later I passed his tire marks in the fresh snow that went off the side of the mountain. Pulled over and looked down to see his truck upside down and on fire about 300 yards down.
Called 911. He didn’t die but was burnt up pretty bad. Sad and scary and don’t go 50 in the snow just because you have a truck or 4wd!!!”
3. Scooters.
“I had just finished driving for Uber and was driving down the access road to my home around 3am when I saw a body lying completely lifeless next to one of those motorized scooters.
I pulled over and flagged down his buddies who were drunk and kept going without realizing their friend was lying on the ground. Ambulance arrived and took the kid away, but I never came to find out if he made it.
F*ck those scooters man.”
4. Freak out!
“Not me but a friend.
After dropping me off at my house around 2 am, my friend calls me and tells me to pick my doors. He said he saw a man standing in the middle of the road and that as he passed him the man kept staring through him. Not at him really, but like their was something behind him in his back seat. He also said he could barely make out anything about the man other than his large eyes and trench coat.
What really terrified me is that this happened on a street that only my family lives on and no one would have been out that night. Also we’re a solid mile and a half from the nearest neighbor. Freaked me the hell out.”
5. Poor animal.
“A dead, butchered horse laying in the road. Someone had completely skinned and butchered a horse, took the choice pieces of meat, and just dumped it on the highway.
I almost crashed into it.”
6. Don’t pick him up.
“3am on a lonely road and I was the passenger. An old man only wearing a bra, panties and high heals was casually walking down the road.
My friend who was driving didn’t believe me and went back around. Sure enough, he saw him and we were like WTF.”
7. Better safe than sorry.
“I was on I-70 in Colorado going towards Utah, pulled over at a gas station at 8pm. Fueling up I noticed a couple of attractive women pumping gas, on the other side of the pump was the man in his late 40s, just staring at these young women without notice of anything else going on around him.
I walk inside to go grab some food for the next few hours of driving, when I come out I see both the younger women’s car and the older man’s truck are gone. I decided to hang out at the gas station for the next hour to catch a little sleep before hitting the road again.
After driving for a few hours (I was speeding heavy) I pull over at yet another gas station, the young women are there getting gas and eating some food on a picnic table. Looked like they had been there for a while. I didn’t see any sign or the man in the truck but can’t say I was looking very hard for it. Well here is where it got creepy as hell….
Can’t say I didn’t stare at them a bit, I mean they were good looking women. As I am watching them leave I see in the next parking lot over some headlights turn on and it’s the same man as before…. He leaves when the women leave once again.
Okay that’s a bit weird but could just be a coincidence as there weren’t many places to pull over. I leave a few minutes later and catch up to them…now this guy is riding there ass with his high beams on.
I decided to slow down and stay a distance behind the truck. 10 minutes or so later the women pull over once again to most likely get this guy off their ass…
With a sign of relief the truck keeps going and I continue on my way. About 1 mile down the road the guy just pulls off to the side of the highway…. So I pull off a mile or so down the road again.
Sure enough the women drive by and the guy is still following them. At this point we are out in the middle of nowhere and too many coincidences have happened. I called the cops to alert them and about 15 minutes the cops pulled the guy over.
I could have just seen too many horror movies that started like this and over reacted but ya never know. Better safe than sorry.”
8. That’s terrifying.
“Driving down a 2 lane divided highway. I came up to a couple semi sand went into the left lane to pass. I did a shoulder check to get back into the right lane when I saw headlights in front of me.. in my lane. The car was going the wrong way.
I managed to swerve into the ditch, felt like i was mere centimeters from death. Thought my wife’s scream would be the last thing I ever hear… And I never want to hear it again. The semis I passed all pulled to the shoulder to come check on us. Didn’t see the car anywhere.. I think they just kept going.
Had to pull into a gas station after and collect myself.”
9. On a dark road…
“A hitchhiker almost leaping out in front of my car on a dark forest road late at night. The woman literally popped out of nowhere. Had to drift into the oncoming lane. Read a police report that she ended up getting hit minutes after I drove by. She was intoxicated and running from the police. Pretty f*cking creepy.
I hope she’s alright. I can’t imagine what the driver that hit her was thinking.”
10. OH MY GOD!
“When I first started learning to drive I was working for my dad, and one day after work he asked if I wanted to drive home, I was like alright! So I got on the highway headed for home, and while driving, I looked in the rearview and a guy on a crotchrocket was coming up behind me, I thought nothing of it I was sure he would pass or slow down.
I look ahead again and a few moments later I hear this sound, like metal scraping against the ground. I look around and then look back into the rear view, and the bike was on its side, spinning down the highway, and behind it I could see the biker on his back, legs and arms flailing kind of like a baby on its back in a crib, then I watched as he dissapeared under the vehicle behind him.
I was so freaked out driving after that I didn’t want to drive for weeks following the incident. Then eventually got over it. Still I can see the guy in my mind just sliding along the ground flailing about then being swallowed under another car.”
11. Scary stuff.
“I was driving on the expressway around 2am and a semi hit a car and it went into the median. The car basically folded into itself and was beyond smashed. I can’t imagine that person survived.
It was incredibly sad and terrifying to see.”
12. About to get jacked.
“I was a very young woman driving home after clubbing, about 2 am through Hollywood. I was pulling up to a stop sign on Cahuenga, about 3 blocks from Hollywood Blvd., when a bunch of guys begin to casually stroll onto the crosswalk, coming from both sides.
I hit the gas and ran the stop sign without even thinking. They cursed and ran after me, but those boys were ready to jack me. My instincts took over before I even realized what was happening.”
13. Close call.
“Driving home one night from my fiancé’s house, normal night on the Florida highway.
It’s pretty dark, not too many lights, cruising at around 75 headed over a slight hill, just big enough that you can’t see the other side.
Get to the top and start making my way down the hill, and very suddenly in my headlight view I get a giant construction vehicle with all of its lights TURNED OFF, AND PARKED IN THE LEFT LANE OF THE HIGHWAY.
I really, seriously, pray to god that no one hit that parked construction vehicle (it was one of the ones that digs up dirt I think?) on the highway that day. I very, VERY narrowly avoided smacking right into the back of that thing.
I don’t know how the Cherokee I was driving at the time handled the sharp turn I made into the right lane to avoid the vehicle. Needless to say I was very nearly dead.
Immediately called Florida highway patrol and told them about it. I hope they got to it before someone got hurt, and I REALLY hope someone at that construction company lost their job. Because they could have killed multiple people.”
14. Funny/scary.
“Scariest and funniest at the same time.
I was working at a restaurant as a cook. We did full menu till 11:00 PM, then apps and burgers till 1:00 AM. I tended to pull the solo night shift, because I would walk out the door at 1:05 AM and the kitchen was stocked, clean, and perfect.
It was a long night. Stupid FoH kept sending back food orders after 1:00 AM, I didn’t leave till 2:00 AM. 30 minute drive home, and I was exceptionally tired.
I lived in the boonies of Wisconsin, at the time. A good 5km outside of town, which was 500 people, 2 churches, and 9 bars. I hit the little 24/7 truckstop just at the edge of that town for some munchies and smokes, and made the final trek home.
Encountering deer was not uncommon out there, so I was going slow. When what appeared before me, to my tired eyes, was a monster.
It had a huge, round body. This crazy long neck, a pointy head, and only 2 legs. Right in the middle of the road. Scared the ever loving fuck out of me in that state.
Thankfully, it stood there for a second. Brain re-engaged. It’s an ostrich. Ok, not a monster, heh, just… an…
What the fuck is an ostrich doing wandering around in Central Wisconsin?!?
I looked at it, it looked at me. I blinked. Nope, still there. Pretty sure it’s real. Finally, it trundled off into the forest.
What.
I grabbed my cellphone, and called the tiny little police station in town (non-emergency number).
“So… I’m really tired, so please laugh at me and tell me to go home and sleep and ignore the call… but I’m pretty sure I just saw an ostrich on Highway xx just outside $town.”
She started laughing hysterically, then assured me that:
No, I’m not hallucinating.
There’s an ostrich and emu farm on the other side of town, guy raises them for the kitch places in town for meat.
Some drunk driver felt that “turns are for pussies”, went up, over the berm, through the fence, and through most of the barn.
There’s still 4 animals, including the one I just spotted, unaccounted for.
Where are you exactly, and which way did it go so we can round it up?
I gave her the info, finished the last few miles home, and died in bed. Wild night, man.”
15. This is crazy and sad.
“Someone I knew locally came across a jeep that had just crashed into the ditch on a highway at night, flipped on it’s top, wheels still turning kind of thing.
He was the first on scene so called 911 and ran down into the ditch. The driver, who was badly mangled, had been tossed from the car and was dying. This guy held him and the driver died in his arms.
The weirdest part of it all was that he found out the next day that it was his cousin, but he hadn’t been able to recognize him.”
Shudder…
Now we want to hear your stories!
In the comments, please tell us about the creepy stuff you’ve seen when you’ve been driving at night.
Remember the beginning of Twilight Zone: The Movie?
I saw that movie when I was VERY young and it scared the hell out of me and left me with a permanent fear of driving in the middle of nowhere at night.
Here’s the scene so you can see what I’m talking about.
Hey, the road is a creepy place at night.
Let’s take a look at scary incidents that AskReddit users had while driving at night.
1. That’s a creepy movie, too.
“I dropped my GF off the night we saw The Mothman Prophecies. It wasn’t a super scary movie, but it had some scares. I take the interstate home. On the way, there is a curve where there aren’t any lights. Just a dark stretch of interstate.
As I came around the bend, there was a guy in a black trench coat walking along the side of the road. As it was about 3am, I guess I started him. So, when my headlights hit him, he whipped around and I swear he stared me right in the eyes.
My heart jumped into my throat. The whole event lasted maybe 2 seconds tops, but it had my heart racing. Not paranormal, but definitely scary for me.”
2. A terrible experience.
“I was driving home late one night and was driving on a dark stretch of the highway. Suddenly a body was in front of me, I tried to swerve out of the way but it was too late. My bumper was hanging on the ground.
The guy died. And I went to a nearby gas station not knowing what to do (was 18). When the tow truck pulled my car up on to it, there were a bunch of blood and guts on the bottom. I couldnt get that image out of my head
Apparently a drunk driver with 5 DWI’s had hit a guy on the motorcycle prior.
For years after I had serious depression and thought about it every night before sleep.”
3. Taxi driver.
“I drove taxi during the night shift and among many crazy and terrifying things, I saw a toddler (2-3yrs). it was about 1 am and I was driving in a very wooded part of our town, just after dropping a customer off, and in the middle of the road was this baby just sitting in the dark.
I stopped my cab and turned on my flashers. I preceded to walk up to the kid and he just started bawling. I tried to comfort him but me being in disbelief that a baby with no one around was just sitting there all I could say was “it’s cool it’s cool bro”.
I picked him up and he started crying frantically (I would to if a stranger came and grabbed me) I put him in the passenger seat and looked for the nearest drive way. It ended up being about 100 yards down the street. I pulled up into what I hoped was his house and there was maybe 6 or 7 teenagers drinking in the garage.
I couldn’t see from the road because all the houses had long dirt driveways. When I pulled up they acted as if I wasn’t even there until I said “hey, this your kid?” After a few “whats?” They came over to the cab and said “Aiden? Where did you go?”
Like the baby just goes for midnight strolls. Not a thank you or good bye or anything, they just took the baby in the house and continued drinking and laughing. As I pulled out I felt as if I should call the cops or something but couldn’t bring myself to do it.
I’m still scared to this day that I’ll be driving down a dark road and hit a baby.”
4. Keep your eyes open.
“Back in my twenties I was putting myself through uni by working night shifts at a factory. Money was great but between full time work and full time study i was constantly exhausted.
Sleep got worse when I picked up a second job to make ends meet, parents split up and dad went into depression so he wasn’t working you see. Anyway, after months I kept falling asleep at the wheel on the way home from work just before dawn around 4am. One time as I was driving home all alone after work, I saw half a dozen crocodiles on the road!
I swerved to avoid hitting them and almost crashed the car. I was terrified in the moment because they came out of nowhere and were huge and I’d never seen crocodiles in real life before, let alone on a free way. I pulled over the car and looked in my rear view mirror but nothing was there.
To this day I don’t know if I dreamed those crocodiles or if they were a hallucination from sleep deprivation.
Scariest thing I’ve ever ‘seen’ and I’m so thankful no one was on the road at the time too.”
5. That’s weird.
“I was in college at the time and it was late at night, the day before thanksgiving I believe or at least around that time.
I had had class earlier in the day and packed then headed off on the 10 hour drive to the western edge of Nebraska. It was around 1 or 2 in the morning and I was in the final stretch of the trip. Driving down a totally deserted highway, only 2 lanes with no shoulder so the speed limit was 55. I was tired and having not seen anyone for at least an hour I kept kicking up my speed up to 80. I was flying down the road.
As I crested a hill I spotted head light atop a couple hills down. I didn’t think much of it. Reduced my speed a bit and got read to turn off the brights over the next hill. But I didn’t see any more headlights.
I figured they must have turned off down a gravel road. Could have been for any number of reasons. They lived that way, maybe coming home after a night at the bar and didn’t want to risk getting pulled over on the highway, but at first I didn’t think it was weird.
Until boom, a black car hauled ass past me in the direction that car had been heading, with their lights off. I still wasn’t too freaked out until I saw break lights and then headlights behind me.
I fucking hauled ass. I called my grandparents as soon as I noticed the person was gaining on me. I gave them a heads up and my grandpa said he’d be at the end of their 1/2 mile driveway with his shot gun and rifle waiting for me.
I still had another 10 miles to go until the nearest town, then about 20 miles on gravel to get to their house. I knew the roads reasonably well, but not well enough to get off the main drag and zig zag across country roads.
I was doing 90 and so was this person, but kept their distance. I got to the town and just hauled ass through it. I didn’t stop for the 2 stop signs or the one stop light.
At that point I was hoping to get pulled over. As I got about a mile from my grandparents house my grandpa turned on his head lights and spot light on his truck and was driving towards me. That’s when the person turned back around.
I always wonder wtf they were doing. Like were they just fucking with me? Did they want something? I’ll never know.”
6. Holy shit.
“A lady tried to use my truck to commit suicide. I was going 40 and she jumped towards my truck. It happened so fast I couldn’t stop in time and her head smashed out my drivers side window. Scared the shit out of me.
At first I didn’t know that I hit a person until I looked back and saw her body in the road. She didn’t die that day but as soon as she got out of the hospital, she went back and did the same thing. This time it was a semi truck and she didn’t make it.
Super sad story.”
7. Don’t drink and drive.
“Driving home after a get together and I saw headlights that seemed “funny”.
It was from a car driving the wrong way and I swerved at the very last second.
Driver was drunk and hit a van carrying a family, 3 people died, the drunk driver lived.”
8. A game of chicken.
“One time I was going to my friend’s a few towns over. Most of the drive is a pretty straight road with a few stops, and has a speed limit of 45( so everyone does 55 usually)
It’s about 8 o’clock and dark out and I get stuck behind a slow car doing about 35mph. It’s frustrating but I’ll pass at the next passing zone. Next thing I know he goes even slower, down to 20 mph. I think maybe he feels me to close to him, so I back off his bumper and he speeds up to 45.
Soon he slows back down agian..
Then speeds back up..
Then slows agian. But this time he comes to a stop. In the middle of the road. No one else around. No stop sign. I decide fuck this and slowly start going around him. And I remember wanting to look over but as I was going by him I start accelerating.
Then he lays on his horn and starts accelerating to. So I put the peddle down even more trying to pass him. He is still laying on his horn. I am freaking out, so I just accelerating harder Finally we are up to 80 mph me in the opposite lane before he slows off. I keep going wanting to put some distance on us.
Coming to the end of the road is an intersection with traffic lights. Light turns red. Guy is still behind me. I grab a ice scraper from the backseat to get ready for him to get out and come to my truck.
Thankfully nothing happens. I turned at the intersection and he keeps going. Crisis adverted, but I was still shaking when I got to my friends house…”
9. Brutal.
“Driving to work early, still dark, got caught on scene as the paramedics and police were closing down the street.
Man on a bike hit by a car, woman standing outside her car holding her face and staring at the man she hit totally inconsolable. Man on the ground, head contorted behind his back, legs splayed like a ragdoll, shoes in the street with his toes facing the wrong way, his face bloodied and cut, and his butt half out of his pants while he convulsed, obviously dying from his injuries.
I was forced to stay there while police figured out who saw what and who was involved, so I got to watch the guy die.
I didn’t work that day.”
10. Don’t stop!
“It was about 3am and we were driving back to Dallas from a field party in OK. Long dirt roads, houses few and far between. As we pass a particularly broke down looking farmhouse there is little girl standing at end of the driveway holding a headless doll just watching our car drive by.
Made my blood go cold.”
11. Years ago…
“I had a weird and somewhat frightening experience one night years ago while on a long dark road one night. I was in the Navy at the time, and I was on a training trip to Groton, CT.
I was quite the partier in younger days, and I would wander damn near anywhere wherever I thought there was some music, dancing and action (wink wink). One night I decided to wander somewhere north of the New London / Groton area to see what else was out there.
Well I didn’t see anything worth mentioning, so I said screw it and finally turned my rental car around to head back to the base.
Now let me set the scene as it really was. I was just driving along this long, dark highway when I spotted a white guy just standing there in the pitch darkness alone and alongside the road.
There was no car or anything there… it was just him. As a southerner, my first impulse was to ask if he was OK… that is until I looked into his eyes. This man looked me right in the eye, and his stare sent a damn chill through me as I drove by.
He actually had the look of something between a spirit and an outright ax murderer. I mean like this dude didn’t even look REAL! He didn’t say a word to me, and he made no physical gesture.
He just stared at me with this evil, weird and ghostly look in his eyes. Bottom line is this: He scared the shit out of me, so I kept my Black ass moving and got the fuck out of there as fast as possible.
I was even afraid that I was going to have bad dreams that night. THAT’S just how evil and weird this cat looked!
This incident happened about 35 years ago, and I never forgot about it, so I hope this puts the story into a better perspective in terms of the “Jason” effect this dude had on me.”
12. Back in the day.
“1978 or ’79.
I was the lead singer/guitarist of a punk band called The Nads. Punk was new to Vermont and roundly hated in an era of overblown bands issuing albums of overly instumented 14 minute pieces. We were three poor kids with secondhand equipment and few gigs.
We were also the owner of an ancient “Thames” van which had previously served a plumber. His name was still faintly visible on the sides despite many scrubbings. Anyway, we travelled up and down Vermont and also made trips to New Hampshire and Maine playing where we could.
We got a gig playing at a basement bar in Portland, Maine but the pay would cover not much more than the gas. We gassed up, packed two days worth of sandwiches and a change of underwear and off we went. Just over the border in Maine we blew a tire (or “tyre” since it was a Thames).
It was still afternoon and there was a garage/gas station nearby so we took the tire off and walked it over to see if they could repair it. The spare was bald as hell and probably wouldn’t have got us home. The road was narrow and in pretty rough shape and we walked along in our all-black attired and our unfortunate haircuts.
The reaction we got from the locals at the station was shock but we had cash and away we drove. About 20 miles further the same tire flattened again and we figured that we had been had. We were in an even more rural area and this was the time before cell phones so we were fucked. Night closed in.
We had food to eat and plenty of forest to pee in so we just waited for a good Samarian or at least daybreak. Sorry, bar that took a chance on us. We lounged around inside the van and played around a bit on a new song we were writing. then ate and tried to sleep.
Deep in the night we heard the screeching of metal being dragged along asphalt and we bolted upright and peered out the windshield. There a snowmobile was racing along the (June) road shooting off sparks behind it like a comet.
One guy was driving and another guy was…well…”surfing” behind it on something which looked like a piece of farm machinery while he clung desperately to a rope tow line. The “comet” lingered in our eyes as the two disappeared around a wooded corner. We didn’t say anything for a long while until Bill our drummer blurted out, “You guys need to write a song about that shit.” And so “Wrenchhead Surfing” was written.”
13. Naked dude.
“Dude burst out of the woods completely naked and made noise beyond screaming. We were driving maybe 35 km/h at the time due to us just coming round a bend in the dark and we see this figures tearing out of the woods on the drivers side of the road.
Head lights hit this man butt naked, covered in what appeared to be blood and they caught his eyes in that reflective freaky state. The noise that came out of his mouth could be called a scream but that would not do it justice.
The most ungodly thing I have ever heard and considering we were in a car with all the windows up it must have been obscenely loud because it was like it could have been coming from inside the car.
This was in ’96 and I still have dreams where he runs out from somewhere dark and makes that sound to this day.”
14. On the run.
“Driving home around midnight Halloween night after hanging with friends. We are traveling down the freeway and fog is beginning to roll in so we are driving relatively slowly.
We take our exit and as we are heading up the ramp we see the shadow of a figure walking across the road. The lights from the road ahead projected his shadow into the fog on the road in front of us before we saw him.
He was stumbling with his arms in front of him across the exit ramp. Much like a zombie in a horror movie. We barely missed him.
We called 911 to report a man stumbling across the exit ramp heading toward the freeway. Turns out it was a drunk driver who crashed his car into the ditch and he was on the run.”
15. Floor it!
“Driving in rural Arkansas on a pitch black night.
Came to a tiny intersection in the middle of nowhere with an abandoned car, driver’s door open, interior lights on, and not a single other vehicle for miles. No one to be seen.
Sped the hell out of there.”
16. In Mexico.
“While driving from Morelia to Ciudad Hidalgo, in Mexico, back in the 80’s we had two ways to get to Ciudad Hidalgo which was the national road or the old national road which was called Mil Cumbres. Mil cumbres basically means 1,000 curves. That stretch of road literally had 1,000 curves so a lot of people would get motion sickness when on that road.
One evening on our way back to my grandparents, who lived in Ciudad Hidalgo, my grandfather was driving and he loved taking Mil Cumbres because it had really nice views and he just really loved driving that road but since we had the new national road, not a lot of people used that road anymore so it was kind of desolate with the exception of passing one or two little towns.
It was dusk so soon that meant that being on such a desolate road in the moutains, we would be in complete darkness on the road with no many other cars on the same stretch of road. It took 2 hours to get to the town on that road so maybe 45 mins into the drive it had already gotten really dark and as we were driving my grandfather started slowing down.
I was sitting in the back seat because my grandmother was in the front with my grandfather so I kind of stood over the front chairs to see why he was slowing down. That’s when I saw a hug tree log blocking the road. My grandfather came to a stop and immediately started going in reverse to turn around and get out of the immediately.
After we turned, my grandfather stepped on the gas pedal and I was sort of thrown back into the back seat. I immediately turned around to see if I could anything and as we were speeding away, I could see men, very dimly since it the light from the tail lights from the car were starting to get dimmer and dimmer, coming from out of the adjacent trees next to tree log on the road, with flashlights and guns.
We were about to get robbed and thanks to my grandfather’s quick thinking and taking action immediately, we avoided it. That was the last time I was ever on that road.”
Okay, now I’m scared.
Let’s hear from you.
In the comments, tell us about the creepiest thing you’ve ever seen while driving at night.
One of the hardest questions for certain people to answer is “what do you want to do?” There are people who know what that answer is from the time they finish potty training, but for others…there doesn’t seem to be anything typical out there that seems like a good fit.
Which I guess is how people like these 16 get into super obscure lines of work – there’s something out there for everyone, if you look long enough.
16. Geologists do such a wide range of things.
Concrete petrographer. I just started this month.
I studied geology in college and now my job is to look at concrete using petrographic methods I learned at school and conduct ASTM tests to determine quality of concrete.
Very interesting work because concrete is engineered rock and there’s A LOT more to it than you think
15. That’s cooler than anything I’ve done with my film degree.
I work in QC (Quality Control) for media.
In one company they occasionally paid me to watch porn to make sure it was in sync and in good quality for video on demand distribution.
In another company I spent years watching movies before release in secure theater-like rooms, to make sure the files are ready for distribution (subtitles and audio in sync, no picture corruptions, stuff like that). I always got to watch the biggest movies of the year in a giant screen weeks before they were released (sometimes months!).
I got the job by going to film school.
14. Is your name Jeeves?
I’m a House Manager for a family of four, basically I’m a female butler.
I’ve worked for them for 14 years starting as the kids Nanny, they’re my second family pretty much!
I organise trades people, holidays, birthdays, daily meals, dinner parties, housekeeping, the list goes on..
It’s challenging at times but keeps me on my toes and I enjoy that.
13. I guess you really can find anything in the paper.
I was a puppeteer for many years and I actually got that job from an ad in the classifieds.
It cracks me up that there is a scene in Being John Malkovich where he tries to find “puppeteer” in the classifieds and fails.
12. That guy is definitely the life of the party.
My dad told me of this one time he went to my mom’s work Christmas party, (she was a banker). As the bankers talked shop and tried to sound impressive, the spouses grew bored and talked among themselves. The guy who drew the biggest crowd was this man who worked at a toilet factory and he did quality control. His job was to flush toilet paper and simulated poop down the toilet. The people at the party, (especially the men) were riveted by his descriptions and peppered him with questions while all these upper management bankers looked on with irritation.
11. I think “play” is a weird term, but okay.
I work in a clinical lab where I get to play with baby sweat for a bit of my day.
We are testing for chloride level. Increased chloride in sweat is one of the diagnostic markers for cystic fibrosis.
I am a clinical laboratory scientist. Not all clinical labs perform this test but I am lucky enough to work at a lab where we do a couple interesting low volume tests.
10. Someone definitely has to do it.
So not job, but company/industry. (I was their first marketing person)
I worked at a company that specialized in Phased Array Ultrasonic non-destructive testing.
The technicians made a shit ton of money and got to work in crazy places like Nuclear power plants in Canada and offshore oil rigs in Norway.
They even worked on some of the NASA launching pads.
9. From one bug lover to another…
I work in a lab where I raise moths! I got it by telling my lab partner that I love bugs and he hooked me up
8. This would be such a fascinating job.
Official court stenographer. I type everything everyone says in court. I was told about it in high school and thought it sounded cool so I went for it.
Took 5 1/2 years in college, but I’m nationally certified to type 260 WPM and regularly push above 300 WPM in court.
7. This definitely qualifies as obscure.
You know when you’re watching a sports program and you see the little pop-graphic in the corner (ie. a baseball players stats, or an advertisement for easy-mac, or “stay tuned for Saved By the Bell @ 9!”)? Yeah. That was me.
I updated those graphics and uploaded them to Fox Sports. Since Fox Sports is a 24-hour channel, there’s always one guy in the office 24-hours a day.
6. Wait, people can’t clean their own grills?
I cleaned grills for super rich people in Palm Beach. Even got to clean Michael Jordan’s at one point. And it was recommended to me from a friend who was in sobriety with me after I got clean.
5. Who knew it would be so complex?
I spent a year on a team reclassifying the Duke University Library system from Dewey Decimal to Library of Congress. Had to learn like four different alphabets just to label them properly.
Duke University has one of the largest research libraries in the world with millions of books. In addition to the main library, we went through engineering, biology, art and divinity. There was also another main library on East Campus. The whole operation took about 2 years I think. I was there from December 2006 to February 2008 when the project ended.
The Dewey Decimal system works perfectly well for small American libraries that cater to an English speaking, Judeo Christian populace. The Library of Congress system is more egalitarian and perhaps more importantly, has unassigned sections for disciplines that have not yet been discovered. Large university libraries and other world class collections are better served by the LoC system.
I don’t quite remember the number of people on our team, but it was about 15 of us doing the physical labor. We were a company that did contract work for libraries. We mostly labeled books, scanned barcodes and reshelved.
The reason I learned those alphabets was because we had to meet production and the barcode sheets only used the Latin alphabet. Most of the time the barcodes on the book and the labels matched, but sometimes they didn’t or were missing altogether and then you’d have to waste precious time figuring out what was going on. I’d scope ahead when we were about to hit a section in another writing system to make sure I was prepared.
4. Of course she applied off Craigslist. Where else?
(Past job) I worked at a whorehouse.
I was the ‘receptionist’, guys would come and id buzz them in after confirmation of their ‘appointment’ from the intercom. They would enter, check id, get then a water or pop, take payment. Then id call the girl from the intercom and they would led him to the room.
It is technically an adult massage parlour. I applied off craigslist. Went for the interview.
Only real rule was receptionist cannot become escorts and escorts cannot after chose to be reception.
3. This is a very cool, spy novel kind of job.
I’m a Hostage Survival Trainer.
I was working in international development within IT, and was asked to go and sort out the finance system in Iraq back in 2007. The ministry I was working in got attacked by a militia and myself along with my 4 guards got captured.
Over time the guards were killed and I got released in an exchange deal after being held for over 2.5 years. I did an AMA about it some years ago.
2. A sad but important job, I think.
I’m one of two employees at a pet crematory.
1. This sounds like part of a romance novel.
I used to work on a lavender farm!
It’s totally unrelated to my field of study and incredibly difficult in terms of manual labor, but man was it a beautiful place. I tended to the plants, took care of goats, and did processing for the herbs and honey.
My grandparents are farmers and so I grew up with mediocre knowledge of field work and beekeeping and when a friend’s mom decided to start a business centered around lavender she asked me to help out for the summer.
I’m fascinated by this (but I also wish someone had told me “writer” was a real job when I was much younger!).
If you do an odd or obscure job, tell us what it is and how you got into it in the comments!
